


The Cruel Lies Of Sphinxes And Spiders

by ColdGoldLazarus



Category: AFK Arena (Video Game)
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Politics, men are background characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 15:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18920011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdGoldLazarus/pseuds/ColdGoldLazarus
Summary: To help assemble an alliance against the Hypogeans, a diplomatic convoy led by Mirael is sent deep into Mauler territory, to speak with a spider queen whose tribe has seen unprecedented success in repelling the invaders thus far - but when Ankhira takes a little too much interest in the witch, negotiations take a turn for the strange. Meanwhile, back in Ranhorn, Estrilda must contend with an exiled sphinx who has recently arrived, aiming to help reclaim the northwestern desert. However, Safiya seems to be playing games of her own, and Estrilda wants to get to the bottom of her schemes before they can threaten the alliance itself.





	The Cruel Lies Of Sphinxes And Spiders

“What is the meaning of this?” Queen Zara struggled in her captors’ grips as she was roughly dragged through the palace halls. A coup of some sort had clearly been staged. They’d passed her advisors’ chambers not long ago, the doors open to show the grisly fates met by many she considered close friends. But rather than slain in her sleep like they had been, she had been awoken, her most trusted guards replaced by strangers, who shackled her roughly while announcing that she was under arrest for crimes against the land. A nonsensical claim, of course, but by the time she was awake enough to fight back, she had already been bound; helpless, she was forced to follow along. At first she feared she was being taken to the dungeons, but rather than descending, they instead worked their way upward, until she found herself facing a familiar set of ornate doors - the throne room. Somehow, this failed to assure her.

Who could it be behind this? She was a loving queen, but not a stupid one, and she’d been keeping her eyes on a few suspicious individuals who seemed a little too eager for power. Lord Amir? Dame Laila? They didn’t seem quite so bold or well-connected to pull this off, but perhaps she had misjudged them. The doors were opened, and Zara dragged through…

To behold the last possible person she could have expected. Safiya, a Daughter Of The Desert and lowly, kindly assistant to the High Mage lounged easily on the throne, licking her paws before glancing up with a triumphant smirk. Zara felt something inside herself shatter.

“Welcome, my queen,” Safiya said plainly, stretching leisurely as she gradually rose, stepping down from the dias to approach. “I hope the guards didn’t wake you too roughly?”

“How… how could you do this?” Zara implored, hurt as she watched the young sphinx, her vision growing blurry at the edges with unshed tears. “I… I never would have thought you would…” She recalled every interaction she’d had with the magician’s apprentice; across ten years of acquaintanceship, Safiya had been nothing but polite and gentle, welcoming the queen’s advice when it was dispensed, and even seeking out her council at times. Zara had come to view her as one would a beloved niece, and wished they’d had time to grow closer. And now… and now she was looking down upon her with the cruelest of smirks, a mixture of pity, pride, and distaste swirling in her eyes. “Why did it have to be _you?_ ” Her voice broke.

“Well, I have,” Safiya gloated, pacing around her prisoner and sizing her up. She seemed almost disappointed that this was going so easily, but she masked such a thought behind another sneer before Zara could see. “Would you have preferred if it was someone like Dame Laila, perhaps? Someone noble-born who presented an obvious threat, because of course the common folk would never dare to dream of power.”

Zara closed her eyes, hanging her head. “You know it wasn’t that. I thought… I… You were like family, to me. I would never have thought ill of you. Nothing like this.”

Safiya slowed, just for a second, but quickly resumed her pacing, only the lashing of her tail hinting that the words had any impact at all. “I’ve never had a family, not truly,” she muttered bitterly. “You are uniquely deluded to have thought otherwise.”

Zara slumped further under the weight of a growing misery. “How long?” How long had she been planning this? How long had the girl been presenting a friendly face while secretly plotting to tear her apart?

“Seven years,” Safiya stated proudly, and Zara’s broken heart splintered further. “Seven years I prepared for this moment. I saw what nobody else did, and dedicated my life to changing the future. Seven years, and now I’m ready to set everything right. You were a good queen, but guilty of a terrible crime against this city, and now you must be punished for it.”

“What crime?” Zara exclaimed, hurt and outraged and so very confused. She, more than anyone else, had dedicated herself to being a fair and just ruler, and was beloved for it. How could she have committed any sort of wrong?

“The crime of complacency!” Safiya whirled on her, lip curled as she looked upon the queen as one would behold a dung beetle. “You have been a good queen, yes; _too_ good. You take this peace for granted, and dull the people’s capacity for growth and survival. Seven years ago I saw that we could be so much greater, but now with the Hypogeans marching from the Barred Gate, I also see how vulnerable we are. Did you have a _plan_ to repel them? Or did you simply intend to bury your head in the sand and hope they would somehow overlook us? The tribes to the south, for all their faults, at least will put up a good fight, but under your rule I expect this city would fall within an hour.”

“So. This is who you truly are.” Zara’s gaze hardened as she listened to Safiya’s speech. “We are better than the tribes, because we are peaceful. We _have grown_ , because of our peace. And when the time comes, we will turn back the invaders with strength and cunning, as we have always done. I may have misjudged you, but it seems you have misjudged much, much more. Not surprising, that another arrogant fool would be blinded by their ambition.”

“You _still_ misjudge me!” Safiya spat, tail lashing like a whip as she stared the queen down. “Do not think I do this simply to prop myself up! It’s for the land, for the people, for this city that I have taken this power. It deserves to be wielded by someone who knows the struggle of earning their place in the world, not one who was born into it! I can lead us to the strength we need! You’ve never needed strength once in your spoiled, _privileged_ life! You may be kind, but when have you ever had to make a difficult choice, even once? When have you ever been forced to confront your own mortality, and overcome it time and time and time again?” Safiya was screaming now, rage masking defensiveness even as her voice grew hoarse.

But her rage suddenly gave out, voice turning quiet and sullen. “You grew up with loving parents and a lifetime of luxury ahead of you. It’s easy to be kind when all you’ve known is kindness. But I never knew parents. I was a bastard, abandoned to be an orphan. A Daughter Of The Desert. I’ve had to fight for every scrap of food. I’ve had to earn my strength, I’ve had to earn my position. I’ve nearly been killed countless times just to earn my magic! I understand what the city needs far more intimately than you could possibly dream of knowing. This is why I have done all of this. This has always been why.”

Zara stared at her sadly. “Taking a throne and ruling from it are two very different things. I may not have struggled in the same way you have, but please believe me; I _have_ had to make difficult choices in the past. I may have been granted the throne by birthright, but in many ways I still had to earn it. And contrary to what you may believe, strength and kindness aren’t so separate in the end. I sincerely hope you learn this someday… Because if you don’t, you’ll find yourself being torn apart.”

Safiya’s expression darkened, and she turned her back on the queen. “Execute her,” she simply said, waving over a hooded figure who had been waiting in the corner.

“Not even a trial?” Zara commented, more disappointed than upset. “You’re not off to a good start, like this.” Everything in her screamed to shy away from the executioner, but she held her stance, forced herself to focus purely on her usurper.

“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Safiya remarked, facing her captive again as she gestured broadly to the hall, wings flaring for emphasis. “This _was_ your trial. I declare you guilty of complacency; the very same complacency that allowed me to take over in the first place. I thought perhaps you would understand, and if so I could at least allow you to serve out your punishment as an advisor. But if all you have to offer is the same weakness you’ve inflicted on everyone else, you have no place here.”

“And you wouldn’t just banish me either?” Zara questioned, but then lifted a paw, chains clanking, to stop any retort. “No, that way I would still be a threat to your rule, wouldn’t I? And you can’t stand that. This may have been my trial, but I declare you _just_ as guilty; guilty of arrogance and greed. You may speak of the need for strength, but I that’s really just an excuse, isn’t it? Something to let you sleep at night. Could you support anyone else taking the throne, if you found them more worthy, more capable of this strength you value so much? I doubt it. You couldn’t even _imagine_ anyone else being more worthy.”

Safiya remained calm as she watched. “I do this for the people,” she repeated.

“I truly hope you mean that,” Zara replied, shaking her head. “And for what it’s worth, I wish I had known you better. Had the time to teach you. Guided your strength in a wiser direction, instead of following this foolish crusade.” Looking up again, she locked eyes with the usurper. “You may never have felt you had any family, but you were always family to me. And if there was any truth to the person I thought you were, I hope you come to understand that, someday.”

Safiya met her gaze in turn, expressionless and unreadable. “Put her out of her misery,” she ordered, before nodding once in respect. “Goodbye, my queen.” The executioner raised his spear, and drove it swiftly through Zara’s heart. “Long live the queen.”

“The queen is dead. Long live the queen,” the assembled guards and nobles echoed, as she slowly toppled forward, blood pooling across the marble floors. Her expression in death was of unbelievable sorrow, not for herself, but for Safiya.

The usurper slowly approached again, padding haltingly across the room, and stopping just short of the pool of blood. “You… you were a good queen,” she whispered, leaning down tenderly to shut Zara’s eyes for the final time. “But you weren’t the queen we needed.” She felt it, knew it deep in her heart… so why did she still feel guilty? The queen’s blood continued to spill forth, seeping around her forepaws, and she suppressed a sickly feeling rising in her gut, tried to ignore the lump in her throat.

Turning once again, she returned to the throne, sitting up straight this time, back straight and chin raised as she surveyed the scene. “Take her to the enbalmers,” she ordered. “And prepare the death rites. We will give her a good funeral; she deserves that much at the very least. Get someone in to clean this up, too. As for the rest of you, see to what you need to in order to settle in. We will be busy the next few… weeks, really, and a lot of changes are on their way.”

As everyone scrambled to follow her directions, it wasn’t long before she was left alone in an empty throne room, staring at the circle of red in the middle of the golden floors. Part of her wished nothing more than to return to her chambers and rest, but even if it weren’t for everything that remained to be done to cement her new position, somehow she suspected it would be useless. The blood on her paws itched, and she lifted one to try to lick it clean. She lapped at it, long, hard sandpaper strokes, but it refused to come out.

She wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight. 

 

* * *

 

Her reign lasted a year and a month. Queen Zara had been speaking the truth when she said earning power and keeping it were very different things. For all Safiya’s instinctive understanding of how to settle the various matters that came up, her instincts never seemed quite good enough to leave everyone happy, and she rarely felt fully satisfied, always feeling there was another solution she was just on the edge of finding, but never quite could. More than that, she found that no matter what she did, she could never come close to being as beloved as Zara had been, or even avoid being outright loathed by much of the public. Distrust turned into unrest, and unrest slowly became violent, small incidents evolving into open rebellion. Her chosen enforcers shut down the riots soon enough, but another was always just around the corner. Her patience slowly crumbled, sleep becoming scarce as paranoia and frustration mounted; it became impossible not to feel like invisible assassins waited everywhere within the palace. Even though the servants had cleaned up Zara’s blood the night of her execution, Safiya saw that puddle of red every time she sat upon the throne; she ordered a large rug be placed across the floor, but somehow that failed to fix anything.

And then one night, the growing storm broke. News of the Hypogean army nearby already had many worried, and Safiya’s announcement that she had a plan to repel them didn’t have any effect. The straw that broke the Sphinx’s back was shortly after; the ringleaders of the most recent bout of opposition had been found and publicly beheaded. Rather than intimidate the crowd, they only grew more unruly; Safiya was quickly ushered back into the palace, but before the doors closed behind them, she saw a surging tide of bodies overwhelm her guards.

This wasn’t a riot, not like the previous incidents; this was more coordinated and focused. It seemed every last able-bodied citizen had taken to the streets, and all of them were intent on raiding the palace. A battering ram was produced, she didn’t know where from, and as twilight turned into dusk, the gates were broken through.

With a chariot already prepared, it was a simple matter to escape into a backstreet and make her way out of the city, but she hadn’t expected her driver to turn on her. Ultimately he failed to remember the powerful magics she’d been learning before her ascension, but the end result was that Safiya was left with another dead body and no chariot, in a small alley still too close to the palace for comfort. So she made her way on foot instead, using more magic to obfuscate her features and her voice. The guards at the northern gate were wondering why she wasn’t busy taking the palace with everyone else, but after several too-long moments, relented and allowed her to pass.

She fled into the night. Into the desert she had been abandoned in as a baby. And it felt, into the nothingness that was consuming her own heart.

Three nights later, she watched from a distant clifftop as the city burned. The Hypogeans had come, and it seemed her defense plans had been carried out to the letter, but it still wasn’t enough. The demons were relentless and endless in number, and the city was burning. So much strength, but all of it useless.

And for the first time, Safiya wondered what Zara would have done instead. Her paws still reeked of blood.

 

* * *

 

**Elsewhere, Many Years Before**

In a damp, cool cavern, a recently-born baby rested. Swaddled in silks made of webbing, the child slept, sucking on her thumb. She was chubby yet, skin dark but traced with light lines, her eight eyes (two greater and six smaller) closed peacefully as they had been since her birth, while a dark fuzz coated the top of her head. Four narrower black limbs protruding from her back were wrapped close around her midsection; though her poison sacs had yet to grow in, the tips were a vivid red; she would be a deadly one indeed. But for the time being she was small, fragile; precious. So felt the woman cradling her, looking down upon her tenderly.

“Awake, my daughter,” she crooned, tired but happy as she emerged into a modestly-sized but well-furnished chamber. Most important about this place, though, was the ceiling; in the very center, there was a narrow opening to an equally-tight shaft, lined with crystals in a myriad of colors. It was noon, she could tell; sunlight poured straight down from the top, miles and miles above; and the light was changed and refracted into a thousand different shades of color, spreading a dizzying rainbow kaleidoscope across the floor.

The woman carried her daughter to the very center of the room, bathing her in the array of colors, and positioning her directly beneath the shaft. “Awake,” she crooned again, gently swaying the baby upward; sensing the shift in the air, she woke. Her eyes blinked open slowly, one after another, seeing for the first time; her smaller eyes in beady black, then her greater ones, white on the edges, pupils as dark as night, and her irises as red as the tips of her legs. She opened her eyes, and beheld the thousands of colors shining down upon her. Smiling, she reached up to touch it. Her mother smiled too, glad. “You will be wonderful,” she said, and she named her.

And in this damp, cool cavern miles beneath the earth, Ankhira began her life warmed by the light of the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a thing. Dunno how long it will be exactly, but ten chapters sounds right for the time being. Can't believe I'm writing fanfic for this little mobile game, but honestly, it's too good not to. And dang do I want some gay fluff for these gals. So, here we go.


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